Page 41 of The Iron Dagger
“If you were running short on money, you should have told me.”
“I couldn’t have you selling your fortunes for a couple silver guilds. That would take another day, and I don’t fancy the idea of sitting around hearing sob stories.”
“So you would rather steal?”
“Yes. He was a fool.”
“That’s not the point. I could—” Hara stopped short.
Gideon lifted a teasing eyebrow at her. “I don’t know about you, but I point-blank refuse to wash dishes or muck out a stable for a few coins.”
“Gideon,” she said, and she suddenly looked unsure, as though she was warring with herself whether or not to tell him something.
“What, are you going to tell me you can summon gold out of thin air?” he said with a short laugh.
Hara rolled her lips into her mouth and her eyes flicked away from him, and in that hesitation, Gideon’s mocking smile dropped.
“Hara . . . are you telling me you can create gold out of nothing?”
“Not nothing,” she said quietly, avoiding his eyes. As she spoke her fingers found a stone on the ground, and she grasped it in her fist. “It works best if the material is metal to begin with, or at least hard and dense like stone or wood.”
Gideon’s eyes were fixed on her closed fist, watching as her fingers flexed around the stone rhythmically. It seemed to go on for several minutes, and then Hara’s grip relaxed, and she placed something warm in his hand.
A glowing lump of gold rested in his palm, heavier than any stone.
He stared at it for a moment, his mind scrambling to absorb this new information. A clear thought suddenly buoyed to the surface above all the others.
Hara was in grave danger.
He looked up at her as she began to speak in a hurried murmur.
“You cannot tell anyone, Gideon. Swear to me. Not a soul can know,” she said, and before he could stop her, she snatched the stone-shaped lump of gold and tossed it into the wavinggrasses. He made a strangled noise and had halfway risen to his feet when she pulled him back to earth again.
“Please swear to me, Gideon. Swear you will not tell anyone.”
Gideon looked down at her, the blank fear in her eyes breaking through his astonishment. She needed reassurance now, not his slack-mouthed shock. He took up her hands in his.
“I swear it,” he said, and her fearful eyes relaxed slightly. “I understand, Hara. If the wrong person knew that you could make gold . . . ”
“This is why the witch hunter did not find me. He had a way to sense if there were iron-shy creatures nearby, but I’ve never been bothered by metals. Not like the others,” she said.
“So you can make more than gold?” he asked.
Hara nodded. “My tutor only taught me how to make gold, silver, and other precious metals. But I can make others.”
The possibilities bloomed in Gideon’s mind. So much of the wondrous technology that Montag built relied upon their mines. He himself had toured mines with his father, seeing the hard labor and the danger that countless workers were subjected to in order to obtain these materials. The weaponry, the transportation, the communication, the wealth. All of it was tied to their mines in some way or another, the source of their power in the mountainous realm.
And here was Hara, able to create precious metals on a whim with a simple touch.
“My mother and my aunt told me that my gift was rare, even among the royal elementals. There hadn’t been a natural alchemist in living memory. Those with the ability used to be hunted, forced to make gold for those who imprisoned us. My mother made me swear never to tell anyone outside of my tutor, Alcmene.”
“Why did you tell me?” asked Gideon.
Hara slowly brought her eyes up to him.
“You bled for me. I do not think you would sell me out so quickly,” Then her brows furrowed. “And you stole from a man at daggerpoint. If I had known you were going to do that, I would have told you before. You really are dramatic.”
“I, dramatic?” said Gideon. “Rich coming from you. That is quite the parlor trick you just showed me.”
